


The trouble with ghosts

by Spnfanfromeurope



Series: John won't win parenting awards... [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive Parents, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Spanking, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:02:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28568946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spnfanfromeurope/pseuds/Spnfanfromeurope
Summary: Dean and Sam goes hunting - John is not impressed.This story is very slightly connected to episode 4.13, but can easily be read independently.No spoilers.Warnings for cursing, spanking with a belt.
Series: John won't win parenting awards... [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2091657
Kudos: 2





	The trouble with ghosts

Dean made up his mind on a sunny day in 1997 as they were finally driving away from Truman High.   
No more.   
He was done.   
Finished.  
No more school for him. He was 18 and he was tired.

So when Dad dumped them in yet another less-than-half-decent motel (it didn't even have magic fingers) announced that he would be back in 2 or 3 weeks, and added: "Tomorrow, go get yourselves signed up for school, and Dean, take care of Sammy," Dean dutifully answered "Yes, sir."  
And the next morning he signed Sam up for school, and himself up to take his GED.

Then he walked out into the town, as a free man, to hustle up some money, some food and maybe a girl or two to flirt with.

He had filled up his grumbling stomach with bacon, eggs and pancakes at a small, classic diner, which looked like something straight out of the 1950'ies, jukebox music selection included.  
The food had been greasy, the coffee had been good and the waitress had slipped him her number – not that he was going to call – she had to be in her late 20'ies at least and had had a predatory, assessing glint in her eyes, that made him feel wary and almost unclean.

Roaming lazily down the street, he passed a garage with a sign saying, "Help wanted".  
The sign was a bit faded and about as oil-stained as the door, but Dean decided to look in anyway.  
Might be a nice way to line his pockets a bit, tinkering around with cars, which he knew he was damn good at, while he was stuck in this town anyway. With no school to attend. The feeling of freedom rushed through him again, almost making his head spin.

When he picked Sam up after school Dean was a happy man, with a job, a bag full of groceries and no school to look forward to. Sam was less pleased with the arrangement.  
"Dean, you really should get your high school diploma. It's important."  
"I'm a hunter. They don't give diplomas for that."  
"But you might not be a hunter for the rest of your life. Dean…"  
"What else would I be? It's the Family Business, Sam, you know that. Saving people. Hunting things."  
"Dad's gonna kick your ass when he gets back, you know that."  
"Dad won't care. Besides, I'm an adult now."  
"He told you to sign us both up for school. And you didn't. He's gonna kick your ass, 18 or not," Sam said with a note of finality in his voice. Dean didn't respond.

The next week and a half flew by for Dean.  
He got up early, drove Sammy to school, and worked 8 hour shifts at the garage doing everything from sweeping the floors to tuning carburetors.  
The owner was nice enough, in his own quiet, taciturn way, and the days were mostly filled with the clanking of tools and the buzz of the local radio station from the old portable on the high shelf. A mindless chatter of advertising interspersed with small town news and country music. It was quite soothing compared to the hustling noise of high school hallways.  
Since it was the only place nearby, he spent his lunch drinking good coffee, eating greasy food and fending off the waitress at the diner down the street.

It was Wednesday evening. They were slumped in front of the TV, when Sam suddenly said, "Dean, there's a ghost at the school."  
Dean straightened up. "What?"

Sam told him about the cold spots in the lab, and the way things in there sometimes seemed to fall off tables with no one nearby.  
How yesterday a student insisted that someone had shoved her into a table. One of the boys got sent to the principal's office even though he was swearing high and low that he didn't touch the girl.

"I took the EMF meter to school today, and it went crazy. It has to be a spirit."  
Dean nodded. "I'll call Dad."  
But Dad didn't answer his phone.  
Dean grunted "Well, then. Just…Bring something iron and salt to school tomorrow, stay away from the lab, and be careful, ok?"  
Sam shrugged, nodded and turned back to the tv.

The next day Dean had had to stay longer at the shop, getting a car ready, and he was half asleep over their late dinner of Mac&Cheese, when Sam said, out of the blue: "I know what's holding the spirit at the lab."  
Dean looked up, blinking: "What? I told you to stay away from it."  
"Yeah, but this girl I talked to, got pushed into a sink today. The water turned on and she said something was pushing her toward the water, but suddenly let go. She's got a big bruise. It's bad, Dean."  
"What's holding it there, then?"  
"The skull."  
"What?"  
"Yeah, on my first day here, one of the other kids bragged about how their school had a real human skull, and I laughed it off until I'd been to the lab and noticed the cold spots. Today at lunch I sneaked into the lab and picked the lock on the cabinet. It's a real frigging skull, Dean. With a label saying "Adult male, unknown age, drowned 1901. Chester's Mill Pond."  
Dean shuddered. "Why the hell would anyone put that in a school?"  
Sam just shrugged. "I have lab tomorrow, Dean. I can't just stay away. Besides, people are getting hurt."

Dean pushed his plate away and stood. "Well, then. Come on."  
"What? Aren't you gonna call Dad? Where are we going? What are you doing?" The last was added as Dean started rummaging through the duffel next to his bed.  
"I'm looking for my lock pick, you grab the salt and a lighter – we are going to break into a school."

And so they did.  
It went pretty smoothly. At first. They even got the skull into a sink and had it doused with lighter fluid, salted, and ready to burn, when a deep voice said:  
"And what are you two doing here, then?"  
Which was not a question easily answered under the current circumstances.

That was when the ghost decided to get involved and after that… well, everything got a bit blurry.  
Things were thrown around.  
People were thrown around.  
Glass shattered.  
Dean was swinging an iron poker vigorously, the security guard was yelling, "What?! What?!" like a broken gramophone, and finally Sam got close enough to the sink to set the skull aflame – and then his lighter didn't work…  
"Dean!" he yelled.  
Dean looked over his shoulder, cursed, tossed the poker to Sam, who caught it one handed, and while Sam kept both ghost and confused security man at bay with the poker, Dean grabbed the empty bag out of a trashcan, poured the rest of the salt into it, threw in the skull and yelled: "Let's go!"

After a mad scramble through the dark school with the security guard in hot pursuit – (still yelling, although the "What, What's" were now interspersed with "Stop! Stop's") - and after a quick dash out a window, they ran through the night, until they were several blocks away before they slowed down to a walk.  
Dean slung his arm around his brother's shoulders.  
"That was awesome, Sammy"  
Sam elbowed him in the gut. "Don't call me Sammy, Jerk."  
"Bitch."

Old Mr. Greavy, who always had trouble sleeping, and had taken to walking his equally old (and equally incontinent) dog late at night, shook his head, exasperated at the sight of two young hoodlums walking the streets at this time of the night, laughing like loons. Obviously high on something. Kids these days. They all needed a good old fashioned trip to the woodshed, in his opinion. But, of course, parents these days were all too touchy-feely to take a firm hand with their delinquent off-spring. Hippies all of them. Probably high on weed themselves.

Returning to the motel the boys were still giggling as they rummaged around for a working lighter.  
"I can't believe you brought it back here," Sam said.  
"What else was I supposed to do? You are the moron with the broken lighter."  
"It was your lighter, Dean."

Dean poured the skull and salt out into the sink. For good measure, he added a bit of extra accelerant – "Alas poor Hamlet," he said.  
Sam shot him a look. "Yorick."  
"What?"  
"It's 'Alas poor Yorick.' Hamlet is the one saying it."  
"Whatever. Nerd. Are you planning on playing Hamlet for your next thespian experience?" Dean voice rose and fell mockingly at 'thespian' – "Or are you going to be playing Juliet next time?"  
Correctly interpreting Sam's look, Dean added: "If you try to whack me upside the head, you'll end up on the floor."  
Sam muttered "Jerk."  
Dean laughed, "Bitch" and handed Sam the packet of matches he'd finally manage to scrounge up from a drawer next to the sink.

The skull had been soaking in salt and accelerant in a plastic bag for a while at this point. The flames were pretty spectacular. They would have been able to roast marshmallows from quite a few paces away.

It was at this point, John flung open the door.  
"What the hell was that?" he shouted.

Dean jumped.

"I… I… I…" said Dean, walking hurriedly backwards as his father approached… "I just thought…" he stuttered, not sure, where he was going with the sentence.

"In that case you better let me do the thinking around here… Now, what was…" he stopped, looked from one son to the other, then at the slowly dying fire in the sink…"has anyone got anything they should be telling me?"

The two teens shuffled their feet. Time never run backwards when you need it to

"Well…" Dean started.

John looked at the sink, sniffed at the smoky air, surveyed his rumbled boys. It was like watching a storm coming and knowing you couldn't get out of the way in time. A flash of anger, like a flash of lightning, filled the room. Dean waited for the thunder, trying to gauge how close the storm was, and how violent it would be

"Well, boys, you better start talking and don't you dare leave out a single word."

Dean racked his shoulders back and started the story with how Sam had figured out the ghost was there, and how to get rid of it.  
John narrowed his eyes: "And why did Sam go alone into the lab to figure out if that was a real skull?"

In that slow deliberate tone people use when they don't want the world to shatter, Dean admitted that he'd dropped out of high school and decided to get his GED instead.

John's nostrils flared once, then he shook his head, jaw clenched, and gestured for Dean to continue the story of the smoking skull.

When Dean's voice finally trailed off with a vague nod towards the sink and its smoldering contents, the thought of what could have happened to his boys during the night's adventures, of all the things that could have gone terribly wrong, sent a flash of sudden rage like a thunderclap through John's body.  
He felt hot and cold, spikes of adrenaline running like chills from his head to his feet.  
For a moment he just stood there like an idiot, completely speechless. Then he took a deep breath.

"Goddamn it, boys, the graveyards are full of idiots who went out to play heroes, rushed in and got themselves killed dead."  
John almost roared the last word.

Sam shifted his feet.  
"Yeah, well. Sooner or later the graveyard's full of everyone," he muttered.

And that was when his father slapped him. Hard. Sam staggered on his feet and shook his head, trying to fathom what had happened. His ears were ringing, and his cheek was burning. Dean shoved in between his father and his brother.  
"Hey, hey, hey, stop," he said, frantically, but got pushed out of the way as John grabbed Sam by the shoulder and steered him towards the door to the bedroom.  
" You and me are going to go have a little talk."  
He was already using his free hand to open his belt buckle as he walked, as if anyone present would be in any doubt about the nature of that "talk."

Sam went docilely enough, but just as they got to the door, he turned his head and looked back at his brother, his eyes big and dark in a face gone pale.  
He looked so lost that Dean felt his hands open and close convulsively. He took a deep breath. He wasn't much of a hero. He knew that, but he was the only hero Sam had; had been, for a long time. Dad had always been Dean's hero. Never Sam's. And Dean felt the weight of that every waking moment. So, he gathered his courage, and tried to intervene.  
"Dad… he started but was interrupted immediately.  
" No. Dean. Stand down. I'm not done with you either. You just wait for me, start packing before the police shows up here, and you better be where I can find you, when I come back for you."

Dean packed up Sammy's things, as well as his own. By the sound of it from the bedroom, Sam would not want to do anything but lie on his stomach on the couch after Dad got done with him. Dean winced as the sound changed. Bare skin now. He should know. Wasn't the first time he'd heard that particular sound, although most of the time Dad let them keep their underwear on, thank god. Dad was really going to town this time. Auch. That sounded like a bad one. He would stop soon. He had to. Come on Dad. Don't kill the little idiot. It was my fault anyway. Most of it. Shouldn't have taken Sammy with me. Should have called again instead. Should haves and shouldn't haves running through Dean's mind like blind mice.  
Just as he started to seriously consider going in there to pull Dad back, whatever the cost would be, there was a final, loud, smack and an accompanying wail. Then silence. Dean felt his shoulders loosen, and then tighten up again. His turn, now.

The door opened, and Sammy came out, flushed, sweaty and red eyed. He limped into the room, stopped, and stood at the sort of rigid attention that speaks of bone-deep exhaustion.  
"Dad said to tell you to get your ass in there now," he said, and added, in a whisper, "I'm sorry, Dean."  
A heartbeat. That was all it took. Then he was in his big brother's arms, getting hugged breathless.  
"No, Sammy. I'm sorry. I should have stopped it, I'm sorry. If I could, I swear to God, I would do it over. Do it right."  
Sam sniffed and shrugged out of the hug.  
"We don't get do overs in this job, you know that. You better go. You don't want to annoy him any more right now. Trust me." He gingerly limped over to the couch and slowly tilted over to lie face down, relaxing one tight muscle at a time.

Dean stared at his little brother for a moment.  
Then he went into the bedroom to face the music.  
Dad had his back turned when Dean gently closed the door behind himself.  
For a while nobody said anything. Nobody moved. Dean rolled his shoulders uneasily.  
"Dad?" He started, tentatively.  
John shook his head, once, without turning, and Dean fell silent again. Finally, he saw his dad's shoulders rise and lower as the burly man took a long deep breath.

Still with his back turned, John said:  
"Really, Dean?"  
"Sorry, sir."  
"I don't even know what to say to you right now."  
That one stung. More than yelling. More than a whipping. Why wouldn't Dad even look at him?

"Hunting like an idiot. Almost getting killed by a spirit. Getting caught by security in the process. A smashed-up lab at the local high school. Where you were seen stealing a skull. Stealing a haunted skull and taking it back here? And bringing your brother along on this whole miserable excuse for a hunt?"

Dean felt tears rise in his eyes. So, this was it. This was the final straw. Dad had never looked at him the same after the Sthriga incident years ago. But this time it was worse. This time Dad wouldn't even look at him at all.

"And then you tell me that you just decided on your own to drop out of school. Not a word to me about it. You just went ahead and did it. I don't even know how to respond to that."  
"I'm sorry, Sir." Dean whispered the words, hopelessly.

John didn't respond. He just stood there. Feeling like an utter failure. He'd been proud of his boys. He'd trusted his oldest to take care of his little brother. Had trusted him to do so for years. He knew, he was asking too much. He knew, he'd made so many mistakes, but he'd thought that this at least was one thing he had done right: Raising his boys to become hunters. Good solid hunters. It was the only way he knew to protect them – by preparing them for the war he was fighting. Not letting them go in blind. He wasn't a hero. He just did what had to be done. The job was there, right in front of him and he was going to do it. And he had expected his boys to do it alongside of him. And then he comes back to a clusterfuck like this one? They weren't nearly as ready as they needed to be. Damn it.  
He could hear his son's breath behind him. Slow and deliberate. The way Dean was breathing when he was hurt or bracing for pain. He needed to get a handle on this. Now.

"Drop your pants and lean on the bed."  
There was a rustle of clothes as Dean scrambled to obey the command.  
When John turned their eyes met briefly as Dean was looking back over his shoulder, before quickly turning away, and leaning over even more, putting not just hands but forearms on the bed, letting his head hang low, offering up as clear a target for his father's retributions as he could.

He felt his dad step up next to him, felt the warmth of the restraining hand landing on his lower back.  
Dean's thoughts were whirling. Was that a glimmer of tears he had seen in his dad's eyes that brief moment. No. it couldn't be. The look on his face. It had seemed more…lost…than angry… His train of thoughts were hurled off the tracks by a line of fire across his ass, the tip of the belt punching into his hip. He grunted and tensed his arms. This was going to be bad.

And it was.  
Line after line of fire. Red hot ice branding its way in a crisscross pattern over his ass, down his thighs and back up.  
He lost count.  
He lost his breath.  
He lost every shred of pride, every bit of teenage arrogance, and finally every sense of self in the fire of his father's forge.  
His father was the smith, and he himself the iron on the anvil getting shaped blow by blow into a tool, a weapon, a sword, his tears the water hardening the sword.  
Fire and water. Pain and more pain as he cried into his arms as quietly as he could.  
Then he heard his father rumble, "Well, then. Let's blow this town. I'll drop you at the bus station."  
The words cut through Dean's tears like a punch to the face.  
He whirled around, head spinning from the sudden movement.  
"What? Am I… Are you?"  
"I'll pick you up in Albuquerque in a week. Be there."

And then John walked out of the room, leaving behind the shell of the boy he thought, he was pounding into a man, into a strong sword, but was really just in the process of slowly fracturing in the furnace of his obsession.


End file.
